(Rex Sorgatz: Flickr)

From the get-go, the face of Richmond’s proposed tax on sugar sweetened beverages has been city Councilmember Jeff Ritterman. “If we’re successful we’ll make history,” he tells me.

Ritterman is a retired cardiologist who got the council to put the penny-per-ounce tax on next month’s ballot. He says improving the health of the local community isn’t the only goal.

“Once the sugar-sweetened beverage taxes become ubiquitous — and I’m pretty sure they will, it’s just a question of when,” he says, “if we are victorious it will happen a lot sooner.”

But the health issues behind the tax have taken a back seat to questions about how the city will spend the money the tax would raise.

The main argument from Measure N opponents is that the tax proceeds won’t necessarily go to fight obesity. While there is an accompanying measure before voters to direct the money to obesity-fighting efforts, the money raised would go into the city’s general fund. Billboards and flyers all over town — paid for by the American Beverage Association, a soft drink lobbying group — drive that “general fund” message home.

Chuck Finney is spokesperson for the Community Coalition Against the Beverage Tax, funded mostly by the soda industry. The group has spent more than $2 million to defeat Measure N.

“This tax isn’t gonna effect the bottom lines of these companies,” Finney told me. “But their brands and reputations are on the line in a bigger debate right now in this country.”

It’s not just the soda companies that have gotten involved. I visited the only movie theatre in Richmond, the Century Theatres, which is owned by Cinemark, a national chain. They’ve donated to the “No on N” campaign; there are “No on N” signs in the parking lot; posters inside the theatre; the employees are wearing “No on N” t-shirts; and before each movie, a short ad plays about Measure N.

In the ad, a voiceover intones, “Measure N, the Richmond beverage tax, is unfair. It hits people who can least afford it the hardest, and there’s no guarantee the money will be spent as promised. Millions of new taxes, and not one dime guaranteed for our kids.”

Then viewers hear the sound of screams, followed by the encouragement: “On November 6th, vote ‘no’ on Measure N.”

After watching a movie, I ask if people remember the ad and what they think of measure N.

“I’m not for it. I wouldn’t vote for it,” Karen Koistenen tells me. “I don’t think there are any promises for the kids, and I think that’s important. I think parents have a right to work with the kids on what they eat and drink, not the government.”

Joe Maietto tells me he had heard about Measure N on TV, and remembers the ad from before the movie he has just seen.

“I think it’s ridiculous. We pay enough taxes,” he says. “A lot of things are bad for you, that don’t mean you gotta tax all of ‘em.”

Kenneth Wilkerson, pastor at The House of Prayer Ministries said, “It’s not right for the city to try to charge us and then we don’t know where the money is going.”

When I ask him if it matters to him who paid for the ad, he said no. “Chevron, soda companies, it doesn’t matter. It was informative. I’m going to be voting no.”

Other moviegoers — a dozen altogether — all said they were opposed to Measure N — even though most of them acknowledged the negative health effects of soda.

“Yes on N” supporters, who have only raised about $50 thousand, have tried to portray the issue as local David versus out-of-state, corporate Goliath. They mention the Beverage Association in the same breath as Chevron — another corporate heavyweight in local elections.

Andres Soto is the Richmond organizer for the social justice group Communities for a Better Environment. “The American Beverage Association appears to be trying to ‘out-Chevron, Chevron,’” he says “when it comes to campaign spending in Richmond.”

Soto believes Richmonders are fed up with seeing their elections flooded with corporate cash. “This is gonna be another lesson that it’s not always gonna work,” Soto says, “especially in an enlightened community like Richmond — which has been not only the subject, but (also) the target of this kind of corporate spending for some time.”

Whether the soda industry’s spending has been effective won’t be known until the votes are counted. But even if Measure N passes, the industry can’t claim its message has not been heard.

Jorge Cota, 17, has lost more than 70 pounds since giving up soda and making other changes to his diet. (Mina Kim: KQED)

Jorge Cota says he always gets a little nervous when he comes to Children’s Hospital in Oakland for his bi-monthly weigh-in.

“I’m wondering oh, did I lose this much weight, or did I not lose this much, if I gain weight I’m going to be mad,” says the 17-year-old high school football player from Tracy. “It’s just a lot of things going through my mind that I get nervous about when I come to the doctors, especially here.”

It was here at Children’s, about a year ago, that Jorge learned his health was in trouble.

“They told me that I was a pre-diabetic, that I also had high blood pressure, and they thought there was something wrong with my heart or my kidneys.”

“It was a scary moment,” Jorge’s mom Linda Ramos says. “When they were telling us, he started crying, he was scared, and that woke him up.”

At 16, Jorge was 5’11” and weighed 321 pounds.

“So I was a pretty big boy,” Jorge says with a smile.

His drink of choice was Dr. Pepper. Jorge says he’d drink two or three cans or bottles of soda a day. That added up to as much as 50 teaspoons of sugar.

“We just cut it out,” Linda Ramos says. “Not only the soda cut out, the way I cook at home for him, the junk food, the way we shop.”

Ramos also took nutrition classes where she learned to read food labels. Jorge made changes, too. He stopped going to the corner store on his way home from school. He started ordering salads at restaurants and drinking water with his meals. Jorge has lost more than 70 pounds this past year and is a valuable member of his football team.

As for those Dr. Peppers: “If it’s there, I’m not craving it. I haven’t craved it for a while.”

Jorge’s doctor, June Tester, says that’s a big deal. Tester co-directs the weight-management clinic at Children’s Hospital. She says an entire generation has grown up with the expectation that a beverage should be sweet. She says getting kids off of them requires nothing short of retraining their taste buds.

“I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had to say, ‘Milk is not just something to go with your cereal, it’s actually a beverage,’” Tester says.

Tester sees the kids other doctors haven’t been able to help. She says that as in Jorge’s story, it takes a lot more than cutting out sugary drinks to help kids lose weight. Tester’s team includes physicians, nutritionists, exercise physiologists and psychologists.

“We have clinic visits that are all individually tailored to the kid and their family,” Tester says. “We also work a fair bit with community partners like the YMCA, partly to create more activities for kids to do.”

So how much of a difference would it make if city officials raised the price of a can or bottle of soda? Two California cities — Richmond near San Francisco, and El Monte near Los Angeles — could find out. That’s if voters pass their measures to tax sugar-sweetened beverages by a penny per ounce. That would make a 20-ounce bottle of soda cost 20 cents more. Jorge Cota says for teens like him, that won’t do much.

“No, I think they’ll still buy it, no matter what; anything that goes up, they’re still going to want to buy it,” Cota says.

But Kelly Brownell, head of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, disagrees. His group has studied how pricing changes affect consumer behavior.

“The penny-per-ounce which is the level of tax being discussed the most around the country is enough to affect consumption, somewhere between 10 or 20 percent or so,” Brownell says. “[That] would be enough to not make it a terrible burden on consumers, but would affect consumption of the product enough to reduce health care costs.”

More importantly, Brownell says, passage of the tax would give a big boost to the national trend away from sugary drinks that’s already begun in school districts and communities where demand for fresh local food is growing.

“When the beverage industry claims that this really won’t affect consumption patterns, then why in the world are they fighting it so hard?” Brownell asks.

Opponents of the beverage tax say both measures would slap low-income residents with higher grocery bills and drive away customers from small businesses, which would be charged one cent for every ounce of soda they sell.

A group funded by the soda industry has poured more than $2 million into Richmond alone to defeat its Measure N. Chuck Finnie with the “No on N” campaign says Richmond officials’ claims that they’ll use the tax revenue to fund anti-obesity programs is false.

“All of the money flows directly into the general fund, unrestricted,” Finnie says. “Not a single penny is being raised specifically for anti-obesity programs.”

According to Richmond city estimates, the tax is expected to generate from $2 million to $8 million. A companion measure advises the city council to spend the money on sports fields and nutrition education.

Listen to Mina Kim’s Story: